Early Feminist Movement -Caitlin Farrell Introduction At the turn of the nineteenth century, Europe was experiencing the effects and influences of several intellectual movements and political revolutions. This early period of feminism was not characterized by an organized women’s rights movement, but rather a growing change in thought. These changes in thought shaped new ideas and philosophies about women and their role in society. Gender roles were constantly defined and reconstructed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traditionally, European women were viewed as nurturing, moral agents of the family and home, but were thought to be too emotional to participate outside the home. Certainly, there were women who broke the stereotypical female mold of the time and these women excelled as professionals, artists, and writers. Unfortunately, the majority of European women were portrayed as weak beings that were easily influenced. This depiction largely contributed to the debasement and wide spread oppression of women across Europe.
Influences on Gender Roles The Romantic Movement was detrimental to women in many ways because it created a feminine ideal that painted a rigid image of desired qualities that European women should embody. Through literature and art, women were portrayed almost entirely in terms of appearance and were frequently described as delicate objects to be admired by men.Ultimately, Romanticism pressured women to be beautiful and refined because society designated these superficial qualities to be the most essential to women (1). In Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she explains that the behaviors and capabilities of women are a result of socialization, specifically the product of a “civil society [that] renders them insignificant objects of desire" (2). It may be accurate to say that men purposefully reduced women to mere objects of beauty, in order to diminish their strengths, influence, and power which caused them to become exclusively dependent on men.
The age of Enlightenment, which promoted progress, science, and reason, provided new opportunities and freedoms for men, but notably omitted women. One would think that this critical analysis and evaluation of traditional institutions and society would result in a re-evaluation of gender roles, but in reality it was quite the opposite. Enlightenment as a whole downgraded the status of women in order to highlight new freedoms for men (3). Paradoxically, in an era of progress, social change, and questioning of authority, women were still constructed to fit a relatively traditional mold. New legislation called for universal and free education of both males and females, but the quality of education available to females was lacking. Not surprisingly domestic skills were emphasized and taught because they were said to help create better wives and expand the moral development of women (4). While the study of philosophy and science became increasingly popular, they were seen as disciplines only suitable to men. Furthermore, some argue that the rise of capitalism aided in the degradation of women because of the formation of numerous laws that restricted rights to own property and run businesses, thus causing women to become financially dependent upon men (5).
The last decade of the eighteenth century was marked by the French Revolution, which overturned the feudal system, thus creating a new constitution and government in France. The French Revolution sparked radical ideas that were far ahead of their time, including universal education and suffrage. At this time, the National Assembly, which was a transitional body of government from 1789 to 1791, held the power to create a new constitution that could create drastic social and political change (6). In fact, the Assembly debated on the political rights of women and the lower classes of society. In the end, the Assembly declared that women would not have the right to vote, claiming that “Those who contribute nothing to the public establishment should have no direct influence on government (7). In somewhat of a response to these decisions, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women was established in 1793 to advocate the importance of public morality and proper education of all females. This proposed education would help women understand the basic principles of the constitution and laws of the new government. The society aimed to overcome the enemies of the new French Republic, in addition to promoting that women should be involved in politics (8). This radical club for women was shut down by authorities only six months after being established because it was seen as dangerous to society.
The industrial revolution, which was signified by a shift in economy and lifestyle, began to occur in many parts of Western Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. Poor landless peasants began to move away from the countryside in hopes of obtaining industrial or factory jobs. This process of urbanization and industrialization plainly disassociated the home from the workplace. Thus, gender roles became easily distinguishable, obvious, and separate. Men were expected to work outside the home in order to financially provide for their families. On the contrary, women were confined to the home to care for children and complete domestic tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Middle and upper class women were meant to serve as decorations and “symbols of their husbands’ economic success (9). Lower class women, on the other hand, were able to become more independent due to mass production that required an immense number of laborers. Thus, some women became wage laborers in factories, which allowed them to acquire their own income. However, most working women were underpaid, obligated to work in poor conditions, and handed over their earnings to their husbands because this money technically belonged to them (10).
Perhaps the most significant influence on gender roles was the church, which repeatedly twisted scripture in order to degrade women and promote male dominance. Consequently, the church upheld a concept of female inferiority, which explained that women were created purposefully inferior to serve their husbands. The church argued that God deliberately placed women as subordinates; for instance, God created Eve under the command of Adam (11). The concept of Christian patriarchalism, in which God meant for men to function as thehead of the household to protect and provide for his family, led to a general belief that men were superior in all aspects of life (12). It is evident that a patriarchal society prevailed in Europe, in consequence of men serving primarily as workers and public figures, while women maintained their purity through isolation from the outside world. According to the church, women could only achieve spiritual fulfillment through the sacrament of marriage and the satisfaction of bearing many children. Not surprisingly, the church was publicly against the feminist movement because the advancement of women would “destabilize the traditional family" (13). Out of fear of the increasing interest in women’s rights, priests warned parishioners of the dangers of gender equality in their weekly sermons.
Significant People
Jean Jacqu
Jean Jacques Rousseau
es Rousseau, a devoted Catholic, consistently highlighted the inferiority of women in his works, claiming that the small amount of power women possessed was attributed to the fact that men desired women, thus women served as male entertainment (14). In fact, many historians attribute the lack of advancements for women during the French Revolution to the influence of Rousseau. In a debate with feminist philosopher, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rousseau claimed that a women “will always be in subjection to a man, or a man’s judgment, and she will never be free to set her own opinion above his" (15). Moreover, Rousseau believed that education of females should have the sole purpose of benefitting men, “to please them, be useful to them, get them to love and honor them, raise them when young, care for them when grown, counsel them, console them, render life sweet and agreeable to them (16). Rousseau believed that men and women had different strengths and talents, which produced specific gender roles or separate spheres of society. Women should be restricted to their homes, in which they could care for their children, manage the household, and endlessly work to please their husbands. Men, on the other hand, should work outside the home and play an active role in politics and the community (17).
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and feminist philosopher who was determined to prove that women were equal to men in all aspects, except physically. In particular, Wollstonecraft exerted most of her energy on the promotion of equality in education and marriage. Wollstonecraft calls for the equality of men and women in many areas in her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792. In this book, she takes a sociological approach to the inferior status of women, claiming that distinctions between genders in society were not natural, but rather formed and manipulated by society (18). Wollstonecraft contradicted Rousseau’s belief that men and women were naturally different and possessed dissimilar capabilities. She firmly believed that women appeared intellectually inferior because they were not given equal educational opportunities. Thus, women were at a disadvantage, not because they were innately less intelligent, but because society withheld education from them, which shaped passive, delicate, and seemingly weak women.In other words, Wollstonecraft insisted that women were forced into inferior roles due to the implication of society that they must conform and behave a certain way (19).
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright who played an active role in the French Revolution. She argued that the motto of the French Republic, “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” should apply to women as well as men. De Gouges believed that the rights of women were natural and inalienable; therefore she advocated for legal equality of the sexes, in addition to more job opportunities and better education for women. Her most noteworthy work, entitled Declaration of the Rights of Woman, criticized the fundamental document of the French Revolution, Declaration of the Rights of Man, for neglecting women. In the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, De Gouges explicitly extends the rights of males to those of females. She argued that women played a significant role in the revolution and should therefore benefit equally to men, specifically in terms of the attainment of new freedoms and rights.In the postscript of her declaration, she calls for all women to stop being idle and passive and to take action instead. In 1793, Olympe de Gouges was charged with writing works that provoked people and therefore threatened the security of the government. She was too radical for her time and for this reason she was found guilty of these charges and sentenced to death at age forty five (20). Important Primary Source Documents 1.Declaration of the Rights of Woman by Olympe de Gouges, 1791 (21). ØSelected quotations: a.“Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties.”
b.“The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.” c.“The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.” d.“The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all.” e.“Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies.” ØComplete Source: The Rights of Woman Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to opress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that nature with whom you seem to want to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an example of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and surrender to the evidence when I offer you the means; search, probe, and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious togetherness in this immortal masterpiece.
Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated--in a century of enlightenment and wisdom--into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
For the National Assembly to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next legislature:
Preamble
Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the authoritative acts of women and the authoritative acts of men may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all political institutions; and in order that citizens' demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all.
Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Woman and of Female Citizens.
Article I
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility.
Article II
The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
Article III
The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly from it (the nation).
Article IV
Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.
Article V
Laws of nature and reason proscribe all acts harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not command.
Article VI
The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.
Article VII
No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained in cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this rigorous law.
Article VIII
The law must establish only those penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary...
Article IX
Once any woman is declared guilty, complete rigor is exercised by law.
Article X
No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order.
Article XI
The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of woman, since that liberty assures recognition of children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus may say freely, I am the mother of a child which belongs to you, without being forced by a barbarous prejudice to hide the truth; (an exception may be made) to respond to the abuse of this liberty in cases determined by law.
Article XII
The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.
Article XIII
For the support of the public force and the expenses of administration, the contributions of woman and man are equal; she shares all the duties and all the painful tasks; therefore, we must have the same share in the distribution of positions, employment, offices, honors, and jobs.
Article XIV
Female and male citizens have the right to verify, either by themselves of through their representatives, the necessity of the public contribution. This can only apply to women if they are granted an equal share, not only of wealth, but also of public administration, and in the determination of the proportion, the base, the collection, and the duration of the tax.
Article XV
The collectivity of women, joined for tax purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to demand an accounting of his administration from any public agent.
Article XVI
No society has a constitution without the guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; the constitution is null if the majority of individuals comprising the nation have not cooperated in drafting it.
Article XVII
Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right no one can be deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of nature, unless the legally determined public need obviously dictates it, and then only with a just and prior indemnity.
Postscript
Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. In the centuries of corruption you ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread from such a fine undertaking? The bon mot of the legislator of the marriage of Cana? Do you fear that our French legislators, correctors of that morality, long ensnared by political practices now out of date, will only say again to you: women, what is there in common between you and us? Everything, you will have to answer. If they persist in their weakness in putting this non sequitur in contradiction to their principles, courageously oppose the force of reason to the empty pretentions of superiority; unite yourselves beneath the standards of philosophy; deploy all the energy of your character, and you will soon see these haughty men, not groveling at your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share with you the treasures of the Supreme Being. Regardless of what barriers confront you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to want to....
Marriage is the tomb of trust and love. The married woman can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth which does not belong to them. The woman who is unmarried has only one feeble right; ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her children the right to the name and the wealth of their father; no new laws have been made in this matter. If it is considered a paradox and impossibility on my part to try to give my sex an honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men to attain glory for dealing with this matter; but while we wait, the way can be prepared through national education, the restoration of morals, and conjugal conventions. 2.A Vindication of the Rights of Womanby Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 (22). ØSelected quotations: a.“In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of Nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied, and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural preeminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment.” b.“I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.” c.“The only way women can rise in the world--by marriage.” d.“The instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society to render them insignificant objects of desire--mere propagators of fools!” e.“There is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength must render them in some degree dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?” ØExcerpt about equal education for women: After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilisation which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?--a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the wand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilised women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, by their abilities and virtues exact respect.
In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked, especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand.
Yet, because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose that I mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the quality or inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of Nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied, and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural preeminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow-creatures who find amusement in their society.
I am aware of an obvious inference. From every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women, but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raises females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind, all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine.
This discussion naturally divides the subject. I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties; and afterwards I shall more particularly point out their peculiar designation.
I wish also to steer clear of an error which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to ladies, if the little indirect advice that is scattered through "Sandford Merton" be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, use they appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity, have been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim pity; the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice, of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in Nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement.
But as I purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of society, and of the moral character of women in each, this hint is for the present sufficient; and I have only alluded to the subject because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and those beings who are only the objects of pity, and that of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. Dismissing, then, those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex, and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.
This is a rough sketch of my plan; and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, or in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation. These pretty superlatives, dropping glibly from the tongue vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and overstretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action.
The education of women has of late been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves--the only way women can rise in the world--by marriage. And this desire making mere animals; of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act,--they dress, they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio! Can they be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world ?
If, then, it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct, of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and; enlarge the soul, that the instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society to render them insignificant objects of desire--mere propagators of fools!--if it can be proved that in aiming to accomplish them without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over, I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable.
Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear; there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength must render them in some degree dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannise, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker understandings. It seems scarcely necessary to say that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern. Footnotes:
1. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 109.
2. Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929. The Western Experience, CD-ROM. 3. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 108. 4. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 5. Women During the European Enlightenment. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/WOMEN.HTM 6. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 7. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007),
8. http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/481/ 9. “WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009). 10.“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
11.“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
12. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 68-73. 13. “WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009). 14. Helena Rosenblatt, "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002. French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009). 15. “Teaching Women’s Rights from Past to Present,” Women in World History Curriculum, 1996, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/womenRightsHome.html (November 17, 2009). 16. Charles S. Clark, "Education and Gender,” CQ Researcher Online 4, no. 21 (June 3, 1994): 481-504. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher /cqresrre1994060300 (November 19, 2009). 17. Helena Rosenblatt, "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002. French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009). 18. Erwin J Haeberle, “The Beginnings of Feminism in Europe,” 1981, http://www2.huberlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/the_beginnings_of_feminism_in_html, (November 17, 2009). 19.“Mary Wollstonecraft on Education,” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/wollstonecraft.htm, (November 16, 2009). 20. Kate Lindemann, “Olympe de Gouges,” Women-philosophers.com, http://www.women-philosophers.com/Olympe-de-Gouges.html, (November 19, 2009). 21. Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” 1791. Darline Gay Levy, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1980), 87-96, http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/decwom2.html, (November 17, 2009). 22. Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929. The Western Experience, CD-ROM.
Feminism 1820 to 1850
-Becky Putzer Although most of the women’s movements took place in Great Britain during 1820 to 1850, there are some notable women from other parts of Europe. Louise Otto is considered “mother of the German women’s movement” because she used her literary skills to spread ideas to help working German women.(1) Flora Tristan also advocated for working women, but she was focused on French women. She believed that because women were degraded in the working and domestic sphere they “eroded working-class strength.”(2) Interestingly Tristan did not conclude that women should be excluded from the workplace because of this. Instead she urged working men and women to unite for the cause of women, “which in the long run would be the cause of all.”(3) Finally, Carolina Coronado challenged Spanish traditional restrictions on women and likened confinement to the home to being imprisoned. (4)
In Great Britain both men and women spoke and wrote in favor for women’s political rights. William Thompson wrote an appeal that defended women’s rights against James Mill’s Article on Government. Thompson was an Owenite which gave him more freedom to write about women’s sexuality and their right to sexual satisfaction. He also argued that women had separate interests that should be pursued outside of their husbands’ or fathers’ areas of interest. Thompson’s Appeal is interesting because it looks at women in different roles besides wives and mothers. He divides them into wives, adult daughters in their father’s house, and women without fathers or husbands. He acknowledged that women in different stages of life have different needs, but that all of them share repression by males in society. Thompson was a supporter of women’s political representation and even
Harriet Martineau
held that married women ‘were more in need of political rights than any other portion of human beings.’(5)
Harriet Martineau also was an advocate for women’s representation in government. She believed that the government should not make laws concerning women without their direct involvement through representation.(6) This very rational idea was spurred on Harriet’s own life experiences. She was unmarried, fatherless and had no formal education. In society she had no rights or voice and very little opportunity to better herself. Other women such as Caroline Norton would also use their own experiences to gain ground in women’s rights.
Caroline Norton
Caroline Norton was also an Englishwoman and she drew from her experiences as a married woman to advocate for married women’s rights. After coming home from trip she found her husband had taken her sons away, barred her from the house, and started proceedings for a divorce on the grounds of infidelity. She was not allowed to see her children for an extended period of time and the courts ruled in favor of her husband’s custody. Norton wrote pamphlets that sparked debate over whom should have custody of children and in 1839 the Infants Custody Act was passed. This act allowed for children less than seven years of age to live with their mother if she was judged to have ‘good character’ by the Lord Chancellor.(7) This, however, did not help Caroline Norton because her children were in Scotland at the time. It also did not help women who were not judged favorably by the Lord Chancellor. This qualification that mothers have the proper character reinforced what the male authority expected of women; mothers specifically. English social norms were held up to women who were desperate to have custody of their children and if they did not measure up women were barred from their social expectation of motherhood.
Both Harriet Martineau and Caroline Norton were prominent and influential women in the English women’s movement during the 1820s to 1850s. Something that struck me when researching them was their adherence to traditional roles of women. Caroline Norton said that women have ‘a right…to the protection of man’ and that women should be granted rights by men in order to be protected by them, not to be autonomous.(8) Harriet Martineau also did not break away from social norms of women because her arguments for women’s education suggest that rational learning would help them to perform domestic tasks better. She also accepted the double standard that women who acted outside sexual norms were to be avoided, but men were almost expected to do so.(9) From the twenty first century perspective these women look less revolutionary because of their traditional beliefs, but it is important to realize that no one can step outside the time they live in. Norton and Martineau worked with what they believed was a woman’s place in society and focused on getting protection and rights through male authority figures.
The women’s movement in Britain was closely connected with the abolition movement from the 1820s onward. Harriet Martineau was influenced by American abolitionists on her several visits to the country. While women were advocating for the freedom of slaves, they also spoke about rights for themselves and many women drew similarities between women and slaves to strengthen their point.(10) Political representation for women was also a main focus of the British movement. Women had to combat views like James Mill’s that women did not need representation except through their husbands or fathers. Another argument for keeping women out of public and political life was the “women’s mission”(11) This was the idea supported by the church that women’s place was in the home being a moral leader for her family. By changing her family, a woman could change society with the efforts of all other mothers and wives. This challenge to mothers offers an interesting double standard: that women were naturally subordinate to men, but they were the best suited to lead the men morally. It inadvertently opened the door for women to have more authority in the home but putting them in charge of part of the well being of the family.(12)
In France the Saint-Simonian women’s movement was the most prominent and sophisticated. It focused on the whole range of women’s issues rather than focusing on just one such as working women’s rights as had been the focus for other feminists in Europe. It also “unified the economic, emotional, domestic and political issues in women’s lives.”(13) This helped to encourage Saint-Simonian followers to act on their principles and continue to influence women’s politics.
Footnotes:
1. Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, ed.,Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004),106.
2. Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1989), 176.
3. Smith, page 176.
4. Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, page 247.
5. From William Thompson’s Appeal as cited in Barbara Caine, English Feminism 1780-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 59.
6. Caine, page 73.
7. From the Infants Custody Act as cited in Caine, page 68.
8. From Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women, page 165 as cited in Caine, page 69.
9. Caine, page 72. 10. Caine, page 76. 11. Caine, page 82.
12. Caine, page 83.
13. Smith, page 176.
Feminism 1850-1880 -Allyson Obermeier
Feminism in the time period from approximately 1850 to 1880 was notably different from prior feminist movements in several ways.First of all, feminism at this time was largely a middle class movement.The upper classes still enjoyed many rights and privileges and didn’t feel enough of a need to agitate, while lower class women were too occupied with working and surviving to have time for the organization and time required to fight for their rights.(1) It is also important to note that because of industrialization, the middle class was growing in many areas of Europe at this time.As families moved into the middle class, women watched their husbands gain such rights as suffrage and education, while they were not granted the same rights.(2)
Another change in feminism during this period is the growth of organizations focused specifically on woman and their struggle for equality. Women’s rights movements used to be tied into other social movements, such as anti-slavery societies and utopian socialist groups.(3) Feminism was also strongly connected to liberalism.Where and when liberal governments or sentiments were strong, feminism flourished.This usually occurred during revolutions, when conservative patriarchal governments were weakened, and was stronger where liberal regimes challenged tradition and placed greater importance on the individual(4) A popular idea in the nineteenth century was that of progress: society would get increasingly better.Some liberal thinkers argued that society could not continue in its progress without the emancipation of women.(5) The goals of the European feminist movement from 1850 to 1880 are reflected by the designation “equal rights movement.”The women in these movements wanted to gain the same legal and political rights as men.(6) More specifically, they wanted married women to have the rights to their own property and earnings and custody of their children, all of which were legally controlled by the husband.(7) They also believed single women should be able to get good careers with enough wages to support themselves independently.Education of women was crucial to the movement’s success, because women needed to be educated to be politically and financially responsible, and to prove that they were intellectually equal to men.(8) Early in this period, suffrage was not a goal voiced my many women because it was still considered relatively radical.However, by the 1860s and 1870s, women’s suffrage was increasingly becoming the focus of many women’s rights movements.
Spiritual Motherhood
The women’s rights movement in the German states declined after the revolution of 1848 as conservative governments had increasing control over the region. The women’s right’s movement in Germany manifested itself through the doctrine of spiritual motherhood, which said that women, because of their moral and caring natures, should be responsible for nurturing not only their own family but society as a whole.(9) This would require the formal education of women.Spiritual motherhood was exhibited through the kindergarten movement, which used the liberal ideas of “progress, freedom, and universal culture” and emphasized the values of the middle class.(10)Spiritual motherhood was actually seen as fairly radical in Germany in the 1840s and 1850s because it rejected the traditional, patriarchal view of the family, in which the education of children is the responsibility of their father.(11) Kindergartens were a popular idea during the liberal revolution of 1848, but were banned by conservative Prussian education ministry in 1851.(12)
A well known feminist reformer in this period was Louise Dittmar.She founded the journal Soziale Reform which dealt with many issues of social reform, including women’s emancipation.She also published several other works on women’s issues in the 1840s.Her journal ran four issues in 1849, but by 1850 she could no longer find a publisher who dared to print her radical opinions in the conservative climate of post-revolution Germany.(13) Feminism in Germany was suppressed by the conservative government and had little real effect for several decades after the 1848 revolutions were suppressed.
The connections between feminism and liberalism can also be seen in France.Feminism grew during the revolutions of 1848 and 1871, but declined especially during the Second Empire beginning in 1852.(14)In the 1860s though, feminism began to reemerge as one of the many organizations in opposition to the empire.The work of feminists during this period ultimately resulted in the first International Congress on Women’s Rights being held in Paris in 1878.(15) Unlike the rest of Europe, women’s equality movements were very strong in England in the period from 1850 to 1880.One reason for this is that England was not ruled by a heavily conservative government in this period, as was much of the rest of Europe.There are several very well known English feminists, including Harriet Taylor Mill and her husband John Stuart Mill.Harriet Taylor Mill famously compared the status of women in comparison to men to that of slaves to masters.She believed in the full and natural equality of women and promoted women’s complete independence.(16) Her second husband, John Stuart Mill is better known in the feminist movement, though he admits that he got most of his ideas from his wife in his 1869 book, The Subjugation of Women.(17) In 1867 he attempted to get the wording of a voting bill in Parliament changed from “man” to “person,” but was unsuccessful.
Barbara Leigh Smith
Barbara Leigh Smith (also known as Barbara Bodichon) was another English reformer who was instrumental in the feminist movement of this period.Her unusual upbringing probably contributed to her later work in the women’s movement: Her father brought up her and her brothers with the same education, and left them the same inheritance.(18) She wrote a feminist pamphlet and in the 1850s she created a committee of women to work for married women’s control of their property and earnings.The committee petitioned Parliament for these rights with 26,000 signatures, but their efforts were virtually ignored by the legislature.(19) This defeat, rather than discourage the group from further reform work, galvanized them into a stronger organization.
The Langham Place Group evolved out of Smith’s committee in 1866.This new group represented a broader women’s rights movement, which took many actions to improve the status of women in British society.The group published the Englishwoman’s Journal and established the Victoria Press to print it.(20)Both the journal and the press were run and staffed only by women.They founded the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, which served to train women for wage-earning jobs.They also opened the Ladies’ Institute, which served as a “public sphere” for women to gather and have discussions, much as coffee shops had served men during the Enlightenment.Legally, the Langham Place Group successfully persuaded Parliament to grant women rights to their earnings in 1878 and their property in 1882.(21) They also founded women’s colleges, and gained women the right to attend colleges at Oxford and Cambridge in 1870.
The accomplishments of the women’s movement in England were the realization of many of the goals of feminism in this period: rights to property and earnings, education, and career qualification.It is amazing to see what the Langham Place Group was able to accomplish in only about two decades.It is also important to notice these accomplishments compared with the stagnation of women’s rights in much of the rest of Europe.The lack of a repressive, conservative government allowed reformation in England that wasn’t possible on the Continent.
Footnotes
1. Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A History of Their Own, Volume II: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 356. 2. Ibid. 3. Marlene LeGates, In Their Time, (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 197. 4. Anderson and Zinsser, 353. 5. LeGates, 198. 6. Anderson and Zinsser, 350. 7. LeGates, 202, 208. 8. Bonnie Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55-56. 9. Ann Taylor Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911,” History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1982), 319. 10. Ibid. 11. Allen, 320. 12. Allen, 324-325. 13. Herzog Dagmar, “Dittmar, Louise, (1807-1884),” Ohio University, http://www.ohio.edu/Chastain/dh/ditt.htm.. 14. Anderson and Zinsser, 353. 15. Women, Power, and Politics Online Exhibition, “1878 Women’s Rights Conference: The Long History of Women’s Struggle for Equality,” the International Museum of Women, http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1874 16. Bonnie G. Smith, ed., “Mill, Harriet Taylor,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, vol. 3, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 240. 17. Anderson and Zinsser, 358. 18. Anderson and Zinsser, 360. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Anderson and Zinsser, 361.
Feminism: 1880-1914 Amanda Lund Introduction
The final phase of feminism studied in this essay occurs from 1880-1914. This time in Europe was filled with mixed emotions around post-enlightenment thinking and anxieties over newly formed gender roles. Feelings of rupture, randomness, scientific objectivity, pessimism, alienation, and anxiety plagued the people as their future seemed to be unknown. “This new relationship to time, space, and history pervaded literature, the arts, and the social and natural sciences in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century”.(1) Was industrialization changing the workplace? Feminists at this time would probably answer yes, with emotions of high-spirits and optimism to the possibilities their future held. The Origins of the Family
This phase provided women with opportunities to reshape their role in politics, the workplace, and the family. This is why feminists looked to this with optimism and a sense of intellectual empowerment instead of anxiety and fear like much of the rest of society, mostly men. This period sparked “. . . intellectual controversies over the origins of the family, patriarchy & the subordination of women."(2) Was a patriarchal or matriarchal system best? Which system first originated and which system must stay?
Since the majority of scholarly writers up until this time were men, they often portrayed a similar belief and argument in their language. Often times this language was centered on a society which was run with women being inferior to men with roles within the home under the subordination of their husbands or fathers. Feminist creativity was now at a peak and the traditional patriarchal familial system of men at the center and women subordinated was about to be questioned. Many feminists of this time wrote with questions of the true origins of the family. They believed that a matriarchal family with women at the center, the sole child bearers and caregivers was most successful and the original foundation of the family. “During the period from 1860-1890, the explosive expansion of data on human societies past and present provided the basis for the first evolutionary theories of the origins and development of the family”.. (3) These new theories began the debate about how the family was set up and furthered with the rising popularity of science.
Around the turn of the century “a turn to cultural relativism in the social sciences called all such paradigms – including the superiority of Western forms of the family – into question”. (4) So, not only was patriarchal system argued against a matriarchal system, all Western or “superior” forms of society, and family was beginning to be critiqued. This gave feminists of this time fuel to questioning the traditional role of males as superior heads of the family. Here we see major changes taking place in the rejections of Western-thought, and majorly changing gender roles.
So, to put this time period into a more detailed experience, we will start with some background information. Up until this point, the 1860s provided definitions of the family from mainly a male perspective. Most “works (chiefly written by male intellectuals) claimed that patriarchy had existed throughout human history". (5) These writings said that the natural order of things occurred with the subordination of women and this has been proven from the earliest of societies. They looked to prehistory and tradition to support their arguments, such as the Bible and the Old Testament or other classical societies. Although, at the end of this period we see the enlightenment taking its toll on such ideals that traditionally went unquestioned.
At the turn of the 19th Century we see “the authority of biblical and classical texts as sources for the origins of human society now discredited, and the focus of research shifted to existing non-Western societies, which seemed to offer more reliable insights into the period of human development now known as prehistory”. (6)The enlightenment brought ideas of progress and individualism into the light. Ideas of the family originating from female promiscuity, to the continuing argument over matriarchy and patriarchy, we see the questioning continue.
All in all, this period can be summarized as a time when “feminists, anthropologists and historians attempt to understand the historical roots of women’s subordination. Was it a natural state caused by her maternal needs or a political arrangement dictated by powerful men who imposed domesticity on women?” (7) The answer to this lies in the changes made within society resulting in most European societies organizing social relations as a historical process in which the “maternal dilemma” was not something controlled by nature. When looking at feminist’s role in this historical process we can confidentially say that they argued that “women should not become mothers under conditions of inequality or servitude”. (8) Most feminists used this argument as the basis for their research and proactive manner. They also used this argument to support their ideas of the origins of the family. Feminists at this time were pushing for motherhood to be recognized as a role that can be arranged along many different lines in many different ways.
The years between 1900 and 1914 brought forth many changes for women. The traditional arguments over the origins of family, motherhood, and natural selection were now being somewhat pushed aside as many women’s rights and equality groups took charge. Women were beginning to be re-inducted into the workplace; the rights of divorce were re-introduced, as well as much other legalities. This time period was the beginning of a major movement towards equality for the sexes. (12)
Important People
Johann Jakob Bachofen
Swiss legal scholar, Johann Jakob Bachofen in the late 1800s argued “how hard it has been for men, at all times and amid the most varied religious constellations, to overcome the inertia of material nature and to assume the highest calling, the sublimation of earthy existence to the purity of the divine father principle”. (9) He argued new ideas (for the time) of family systems, and even mentioned a women-centered familial and kinship being the very first family structure. Bachofen’s works were mostly introduced in the 1860s but did not gain much popularity until the late 1800s.
Sigmund Freud was another popular theorist of this time. His ideas correlated with Feminist
Sigmund Freud
thought around the ideas of the “natural” order of human evolution. He coined the term “incest taboo” and developed the Theory of Human Personality. (10) Incest taboo was Freud’s study around the male child’s inner desire to protect and “want” their own mothers. This is also accompanied by resent and envy for their father figures and thus creates conflict within the child. His ideas influenced the role of women at this time. He also examined human desires among daughters and helped reform the origins of the family.
All of the major influential individuals during this time varied greatly on ideas of gender roles, origins of the family, and human evolution. This time was characterized by great discoveries and the questioning of traditional and western ideas. Feminism fit in perfectly when these groups questioned the role and treatment of women and protested equality in the workplace and the home. The progress of this time signals a great movement for the future of society and treatment of women.
Important Primary Source: A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Crandworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill, Caroline Norton. (11)
A LETTER TO THE QUEEN ON LORD CHANCELLOR CRANWORTH'S MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE BILL BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON.
"Only a woman's hair." THACKERAY'S LECTURE ON SWIFT.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS.
1855. [THE AUTHOR RESERVES THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION.]
A LETTER TO THE QUEEN MADAM,
On Tuesday, June 13th, of last session, Lord Chancellor Cranworth brought forward a measure for the reform of the Marriage laws of England; which measure was afterwards withdrawn. In March, 1855, in this present session, the Solicitor General stated, that a bill on the same subject was "nearly prepared," and would be brought forward "immediately after the Easter recess." On May 10th, being pressed to name a time, he stated that it would be proposed " as soon as the House had expressed an opinion on the Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill." That time has not arrived: and meanwhile,--as one who has grievously suffered, and is still suffering, under the present imperfect state of the law,--I address your Majesty on the subject.
It is not so. Your Majesty is Queen of England; Head of the Church; Head of the Law; Ruler of millions of men; and the assembled Senate who meet to debate and frame legislative enactments in each succeeding year, begin their sessional labours by reverently listening to that clear woman's voice,--rebellion against whose command is treason.
In the year 1845, on the occasion of the opening of the new Hall of Lincoln's Inn, your Majesty honoured that Hall with your presence: when His Royal Highness Prince Albert was invited to become a Barrister: "the keeping of his terms and exercises, and the payment of all fees and expenses, being dispensed with." It was an occasion of great pomp and rejoicing. No reigning sovereign had visited the Inns of Court since Charles II., in 1671. In the magnificent library of Lincoln's Inn, seated on a chair of state (Prince Albert standing), your Majesty held a levee; and received an address from the benchers, barristers, and students-at-law, which was read by the treasurer on his knee: thanking your Majesty for the proof given by your presence of your "gracious regard for the profession of the law,"--offering congratulations "on the great amendments of the law,
its means the wild liberty he enjoys, with some rude form of polity and order.
Madam,--I will not do your Majesty the injustice of supposing, that the very different aspect the law wears in England for the female sovereign and the female subject, must render you indifferent to what those subjects may suffer; or what reform may be proposed, in the rules more immediately affecting them. I therefore submit a brief and familiar exposition of the laws relating to women,--as taught and practised in those Inns of Court, where your Majesty received homage, and Prince Albert was elected a Bencher.
A married woman in England has no legal existence: her being is absorbed in that of her husband. Years of separation of desertion cannot alter this position. Unless divorced by special enactment in the House of Lords, the legal fiction holds her to be "one" with her husband, even though she may never see or hear of him.
She has no possessions, unless by special settlement; her property is his property. Lord Ellenborough mentions a case in which a sailor bequeathed "all he was worth" to a woman he
cohabited with; and afterwards married, in the West Indies, a woman of considerable fortune. At this man's death it was held,--notwithstanding the hardship of the case,--that the will swept away from his widow, in favour of his mistress, every shilling of the property. It is now provided that a will shall be revoked by marriage: but the claim of the husband to all that is his wife's exists in full force. An English wife has no legal right even to her clothes and ornaments; her husband may take them and sell them if he pleases, even though they be the gifts of relatives or friends, or bought before marriage.
An English wife cannot make a will. She may have children or kindred whom she may earnestly desire to benefit;--she may be separated from her husband, who may be living with a mistress; no matter: the law gives what she has to him, and no will she could make would be valid.
An English wife cannot legally claim her own earnings. Whether wages for manual labour, or payment for intellectual exertion, whether she weed potatoes, or keep a school, her salary is the husband's; and he could compel a second payment, and treat the first as void, if paid to the wife without his sanction.
An English wife may not leave her husband's
house. Not only can he sue her for "restitution of conjugal rights," but he has a right to enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge, and who may "harbour her,"--as it is termed,--and carry her away by force, with or without the aid of the police.
If the wife sue for separation for cruelty, it must be "cruelty that endangers life or limb," and if she has once forgiven, or, in legal phrase, "condoned" his offences, she cannot plead them; though her past forgiveness only proves that she endured as long as endurance was possible.
If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself. She has no means of proving the falsehood of his allegations. She is not represented by attorney, nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit between him and her supposed lover, for "damages." Lord Brougham affirmed in the House of Lords: "in that action the character of the woman was at immediate issue, although she was not prosecuted. The consequence not unfrequently was, that the character of a woman was sworn away; instances were known in which, by collusion between the husband and a pretended paramour, the character of the wife has been destroyed. All this could take
place, and yet the wife had no defence; she was excluded from Westminster-hall, and behind her back, by the principles of our jurisprudence, her character was tried between her husband and the man called her paramour."
If an English wife be guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but she cannot divorce the husband a vinculo, however profligate he may be. No law court can divorce in England. A special Act of Parliament annulling the marriage, is passed for each case. The House of Lords grants this almost as a matter of course to the husband, but not to the wife. In only four instances (two of which were cases of incest), has the wife obtained a divorce to marry again.
She cannot prosecute for a libel. Her husband must prosecute; and in cases of enmity and separation, of course she is without a remedy.
She cannot sign a lease, or transact responsible business.
She cannot claim support, as a matter of personal right, from her husband. The general belief and nominal rule is, that her husband is "bound to maintain her." That is not the law. He is not bound to her. He is bound to his
country; bound to see that she does not cumber the parish in which she resides. If it be proved that means sufficient are at her disposal, from relatives or friends, her husband is quit of his obligation, and need not contribute a farthing: even if he have deserted her; or be in receipt of money which is hers by inheritance.
She cannot bind her husband by any agreement, except through a third party. A contract formally drawn out by a lawyer,--witnessed, and signed by her husband,--is void in law; and he can evade payment of an income so assured, by the legal quibble that "a man cannot contract with his own wife."
Separation from her husband by consent, or for his ill usage, does not alter their mutual relation. He retains the right to divorce her after separation,--as before,--though he himself be unfaithful.
Her being, on the other hand, of spotless character, and without reproach, gives her no advantage in law. She may have withdrawn from his roof knowing that he lives with "his faithful housekeeper": having suffered personal violence at his hands; having "condoned" much, and being able to prove it by unimpeachable testimony: or he may have shut the doors
way-side inn. He is two hundred miles away from his real home. He came from the thrifty North, and will plod back there with his savings. Return? No! he will never return. The sharp knife is out--his blood sinks in the short turf where the moorland sheep have been feeding; his moan is lost on the midnight breeze; and his pack is stolen. Is there no law for him? Go and listen in the assize court. There, in the hot glow of summer, amid the buzz of insects and voices, and the loud oratory of declaiming men, you will hear the stillness of that murderous night described; and how its silence and darkness, and the lonely stretch of the apparently deserted heath, failed to shield the modern Cain from the observation of that one "chance witness," whom God seems ever to leave standing sentinel to watch for undiscovered crime. Who would have thought the treasure of that poor pedlar's pack was worth two men's lives? Yet one was taken by murder, and now this other is forfeited to Justice; to prove--that the poorest of the Queen's subjects shall not wander on her highways without the same protection of life and property, that guards the fringed canopy of a duke's bed!
Protection for life and property. Is that all?
Is happiness nothing? Is reputation nothing? Is the law only able to ward off the assassin's knife, or make restitution of stolen coin? Is it able to protect the poorest, the meanest, the most apparently helpless persons in the realm, and not able to protect women? Are the only laws in England "so surrounded with difficulty" that they cannot possibly be re-modelled to any pattern of equal justice, the laws between man and wife?
I think not. I think if men would approach them with the same impartial wish to make rules of protection, that is brought to bear on other subjects, they would find the same facility in applying those rules.
Now, with respect to the condition and effect of the laws for women in Scotland, it came out incidentally in the debate on the Marriage Bill, that the total amount of all the divorces in that misguided country, during the last five years, only averaged twenty in all classes; and this was not stated in defence of Scotch morality, but as a means of calculating what might be expected in England under a new system.
In Scotland, then, though the right of divorce be equal,--and the process so easy that even if the party accused left the kingdom, he or she
could still be proceeded against by what was termed "edictal citation,"--(or reading the citation aloud at the market-cross of Edinburgh, and the pier and shore of Leith), an average of twenty couples only, availed themselves of the law, the existence of which so alarms English legislators.
Very sparing, indeed, are the cases recorded as disputed precedents. Towards the end of the last century the Duchess of Hamilton divorced the Duke, as a Scotchman, though married by English ritual in England. In 1810, Lady Paget divorced Lord Paget, though he pleaded a reconciliation after his original desertion. In 1813, Catherine Pollock divorced Russell Manners, for desertion for ten years andinfidelity. Previous to which cases, Sir T. Wallace Dunlop had the singular good fortune of being proceeded against for divorce by both his first and second wife. The first wife succeeded; but the second failed; not for want of proof of his misconduct, but because her marriage was held to be an English marriage, and so, indissoluble by the Scotch Courts.
It is expressly stated that the number of Scotch cases in proportion to the population, remained nearly the same at all periods, since
the Commissioners were appointed in 1563 down to the present time; and that the conjugal relation "stood not less, but infinitely more sacred and secure in Scotland" since total divorce was made possible, in lieu of separation under ecclesiastical law. Indeed, it will scarcely be urged that it is a more favourable condition for morality, that a woman should remain for life nominally married to a man who has deserted her (as under the English law), than that she should have power to divorce him and marry again, as under the Scotch law.
But Lord Chancellor Cranworth argued the question in a very singular manner; and I give his argument as it stands in the printed report of the debate of June 14, 1854:--First, as to the lighter causes of divorce, admitted in Scotland, he says:--"If marriages could be dissolved for cruelty or desertion, the husband may dissolve his marriage whenever he pleases; he has only to be tyrannical to his wife, or to desert her, to effect the very object he has in view. Therefore I do not at all propose to alter what has been--I will not say the law,--because in point of fact there has been no law--but the practice on this subject."
Then, as to that graver interruption of domestic quiet, inconstancy, he says:--
"If adultery on the part of the husband is to entitle him to a divorce,--inasmuch as the husband (which may be bad morality, but it is the fact) suffers little on that account in the opinion of the world at large (for it is notorious that, while the wife who commits adultery loses her station in society, that punishment is not awarded to the husband who is guilty of the same crime) he may, without any great sacrifice on his own part, but by merely being a little profligate, get rid of his wife whenever he chooses to do so."
And Lord Campbell, in a subsequent debate, July 1, strikes out another suggestion; he objects to granting divorces to women, on account of the ease with which adultery in the husband is (or ought to be) forgiven by the wife!
"He thought his noble and learned friend had wisely abstained from following the example of Scotland and other countries, in which the wife had a right to have the marriage dissolved on account of the adultery of the husband. The moral guilt incurred by the husband was the same,--but in most cases it might be CONDONED."
In short, what between their dread of encouraging the husband to be "a little profligate," in order to get rid of his wife,--and fear of inclining the wife to be unforgiving, in the prospect of getting rid of her husband,--they think it best that justice should be not merely impro-
bable, as at present, but made utterly impossible for the woman to obtain.
Again I say, it is perfectly marvellous what clever and honourable men will say and do when blinded by strong prejudice! Here are these two great lawyers talking as though the divorce of the wife could be made compulsory on the wife, or dependant on her simple resolution. Is the wife, after all, to be her own judge? No; the judge is her judge; the Lord Chancellor himself is her judge; the House of Lords is her judge. The possibility of applying for a divorce a vinculo, does not suddenly invest her with an authority like that of the patriarch Abraham, to send forth her husband, like weeping Hagar, into the desert world. She is to apply for her divorce to the judicial tribunal: to that Chancellor who speaks of an adulterous husband as being "a little profligate:" to that House of Lords which has entertained feminine applications with so much jealousy and reluctance, that there have been but four cases (two of them cases of incest), in which the wife's petition for divorce has ever been granted. With these judges, and not with the wife, rests the decision whether she has refused that indulgence which ought to be a part of her nature, and is the principal charm of her sex,
to the former speeches of men like Lyndhurst and Brougham,--whose celebrity began so early in life, that they are still here to enjoy and add to it; though their youthful triumphs are almost a matter of history to the rising generation. All this, women may study: and when they have read all which they have time, patience, or inclination to read, and ability to understand,--they may take their crochet-work, embroidery, or "Potichomanie," and ruminate over their needles and paste-brushes, how it is that laws continue to be in force, which such men themselves have so repeatedly condemned, as a mass of folly, indecency, and contradiction!
I hope, during this period of tranquil reflection, the rebellious thought may not occur to the tapestry-working sex, that the obstacle to this legal reform must be, that men fear to curb the license of their own pleasures. It is impossible, seeing how eager, energetic, and enthusiastic, men are in other reforms whose necessity is once proved and admitted, not to fancy that the reason why this particular change is "so surrounded with difficulty" is because it is extremely unpalatable to the reformers! I think--to use the words of the Solicitor-General--
the House "will express an opinion on the Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill" with infinitely more speed, clearness, and decision, than on a Marriage Reform Bill. Every man seems to dread that he is surrendering some portion of his own rights over woman, in allowing these laws to be revised; even while he admits that abuses which are "a disgrace to England," blot the strange barbarous code, which remains intact while other barbarous laws have gradually been repealed or altered.
To all that women can read on the subject, I add this more familiarly easy treatise; and I shall follow this treatise by a published selection of " Cases, decided according to Law, and contrary to Justice;" admitted to be so decided even by the judges and counsel engaged in them; the sentences given being often accompanied by courteous and sincere expressions of regret at their manifest oppression; and by a hope that the code might be altered, which made such sentences compulsory on the persons whose duty it was "to administer the law as they found it." My husband has taught me, by subpoenaing my publishers to account for my earnings,--that my gift of writing was not meant for the purposes to which I have hitherto applied it. It was not
intended that I should "strive for peace and ensue it" through a life of much occasional bitterness and many unjust trials; that I should prove my literary ability, by publishing melodies and songs for young girls and women to sing in happier homes than mine,--or poetry and prose for them to read in leisure hours,--or even please myself by better and more serious attempts to advocate the rights of the people, or the education and interests of the poor.
When Mr Norton allowed me, I say, to be publicly subpoenaed in court, to defend himself by a quibble from a just debt, and subpoenaed my publishers to meet me there, he taught me what my gift of writing was worth. Since he would not leave even that source tranquil and free in my destiny, let him have the triumph of being able at once to embitter and to turn its former current. He has made me dream that it was meant for a higher and stronger purpose,--that gift which came not from man, but from God. It was meant to enable me to rouse the hearts of others to examine into all the gross injustice of these laws,--to ask the "nation of gallant gentlemen," whose countrywoman I am, for once to hear a woman's pleading on the subject. Not because I deserve more at their hands
than other women. Well I know, on the contrary, how many hundreds, infinitely better than I,--more pious, more patient, and less rash under injury,--have watered their bread with tears! My plea to attention is, that in pleading for myself I am able to plead for all these others. Not that my sufferings or my deserts are greater than theirs; but that I combine, with the fact of having suffered wrong, the power to comment on and explain the cause of that wrong; which few women are able to do.
For this, I believe, God gave me the power of writing. To this I devote that power. I abjure all other writing, till I see these laws altered. I care not what ridicule or abuse may be the result of that declaration. They who cannot bear ridicule and abuse, are unfit and unable to advance any cause; and once more I deny that this is my personal cause; it is the cause of all the women of England. If I could be justified and happy tomorrow, I would still strive and labour in it; and if I were to die to-morrow, it would still be a satisfaction to me that I had so striven. Meanwhile, my husband has a legal lien (as he has publicly proved), on the copyright of my works. Let him claim the copyright of THIS:
and let the Lord Chancellor, whose office is thus described in Chamberlayne's State of England,--"To judge, not according to the Common Law, as other Civil Courts do, but to moderate the rigour of the Law, and to judge according to Equity, Conscience, and Reason: and his Oath is to do right to all manner of People, poor and rich, after the Laws and Customs of the Realm, and truly counsel the King,"--let the Lord Chancellor, I say,--the "Summa Cancellarius" of Great Britain, cancel, in Mr Norton's favour,--according to the laws and customs of this realm of England,--my right to the labour of my own brain and pen; and docket it, among forgotten Chancery Papers, with a parody of Swift's contemptuous labelling.
"Only a Woman's Pamphlet."
But let the recollection of what I write, remain with those who read; and above all, let the recollection remain with your Majesty, to whom it is addressed; the one woman in England who cannot suffer wrong; and whose royal assent will be formally necessary to any Marriage Reform Bill which the Lord Chancellor, assembled Peers, and assembled Commons, may
think fit to pass, in the Parliament of this free nation; where, with a Queen on the throne, all other married women are legally " NON-EXISTENT."
I remain, With the sincerest loyalty and respect, Your Majesty's humble and devoted Subject and Servant, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON. No. 3, CHESTERFIELD STREET, MAY FAIR, This 2nd day of June, 1855.
Footnotes
1. Allen, Ann T. "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meaning of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914." American Historical Review (Oct., 1999): 1085-1113. 2. Allen, 1190. 3. Allen, 1087. 4. Allen, 1087. 5. Allen, 1187-1198 6. Allen, 1092. 7. Walker, Pamela J. Rev. of Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890 1970, by Ann T. Allen. European History Quarterly 39 (2009): 118-19. Print. 8. Walker, 118. 9. Allen, Ann T. "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meaning of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914." American Historical Review (Oct., 1999): 1085-1113. 10. Allen, 1093-97.
11. Caroline, Norton. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill (1855): a machine-readable transcription. Indian University, Bloomington, IN: Library Electronic Text Resource Service , 1996. (1855) Print.
12. Macknight, Elizabeth C. "Why Weren't They Feminists: Parisian Noble Women and the Campaigns for Women's Rights in France, 1880-1914." European Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 2 (2007): 127-141.
Annotated Bibliography Allen, Ann Taylor.“Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911.” History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1982).Discusses the history of Kindergartens in Germany and how they relate to the women’s movement.
Anderson, Bonnie S.Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.Has information on the education of women and the goals of the feminist movement in Europe.
Anderson, Bonnie S. and Judith P. Zinsser.A History of Their Own, Volume II: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.A good coverage of the women’s movement in several European countries, especially in England.
Caine, Barbara, English Feminism 1780-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). An analysis of feminism in England that traces significant advances from 1780 to 1980.
Chambers, Mortimer et al. The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007). Reveals changing gender roles during the French Revolution.
Clark, Charles S. "Education and Gender,” CQ Researcher Online 4, no. 21. (June 3, 1994): 481-504. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1994060300 (November 19, 2009). Provides a basic history of the education of women, specifically the views of Rousseau. Dagmar, Herzog.“Dittmar, Louise, (1807-1884),” Ohio University, http://www.ohio.edu/Chastain/dh/ditt.htm(accessed November 2, 2009).An article about Louise Dittmar, a feminist German writer and reformer.
De Gouges, Olympe. “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” 1791. Darline Gay Levy, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795. (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1980), 87-96. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/decwom2.html (November 17, 2009). Contains the primary source, Declaration of the Rights of Womanby Olympe de Gouges.
Haeberle, Erwin J. “The Beginnings of Feminism in Europe,” 1981. http://www2.huberlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/the_beginnings_of_feminism_in_html, (November 17, 2009). A summary of the beginning of the women’s movement in Europe, in particular addressing Mary Wollstonecraft’s influential role. LeGates, Marlene.In Their Time.New York and London: Routledge, 2001.An overview of European feminism, focusing mainly on the ideas and goals, rather than historical events.
Levy, Darline Gay. “Regulations of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.” Women in Revolutionary Paris.http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/481/ (November 17, 2009). A short description of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. Lindemann, Kate.“Olympe de Gouges.” Women-philosophers.com. http://www.women-philosophers.com/Olympe-de-Gouges.html (November 19, 2009). Summary of Olympe de Gouges and her impact on early feminism in France.
Macknight, Elizabeth C. "Why Weren't They Feminists: Parisian Noble Women and the Campaigns for Women's Rights in France, 1880-1914." European Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 2 (2007): 127-141. Presents accounts of noble women in france during the late 1800s. Shows the side of feminism from non-traditional sphere, how elite women felt about gender roles and family structures.
“Mary Wollstonecraft on Education.” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/wollstonecraft.htm, (November 16, 2009). A description of Wollstonecraft’s sociological views on the education of women.
Caroline, Norton. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill (1855): a machine-readable transcription. Indian University, Bloomington, IN: Library Electronic Text Resource Service , 1996. (1855) Print. Primary Source document used to illustrate the feelings 19th Century gender roles, includes noble woman. Frustration of inequality against women expressed to the King.
Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, ed.,Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Examines feminism movements in the 1800s throughout Europe.
Rosenblatt, Helena. "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002.French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009). An in depth analysis of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his theory of the inferiority of women.
Smith, Bonnie G., Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1989). Traces different aspects of women's lives, women's movements, and prominent women from 1700 onward. Smith, Bonnie G., ed.“Mill, Harriet Taylor.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, vol. 3. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 239-240.An article on an instrumental English feminist, Harriet Taylor Mill.
Stearns, Peter N. Gender in World History. (New York: Routledge, 2000). An analysis of how and why gender roles are created in different parts of the world throughout history.
“Teaching Women’s Rights from Past to Present.” Women in World History Curriculum, 1996. http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/womenRightsHome.html (November 17, 2009). Presents quotes from a debate between Mary
Walker, Pamela J. Rev. of Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890 1970, by Ann T. Allen. European History Quarterly 39 (2009): 118-19. Print. Reviews Dr. Allen's work on feminism, provides a subjective view to her claims on motherhood.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929). The Western Experience, CD-ROM. An excerpt about the equal education of women from Wollstonecraft’s document, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.”
“Women during the European Enlightenment."http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/WOMEN.HTM. Illustrates how the Enlightenment positively and negatively impacted women. Women, Power, and Politics Online Exhibition. “1878 Women’s Rights Conference: The Long History of Women’s Struggle for Equality.” the International Museum of Women.http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1874(accessed November 19, 2009).An overview of the 1878 International Conference on Women’s Rights in Paris, France.
“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009). A short summary of women’s rights movements over time, specifically the role of industrialization and the teachings of the church.
-Caitlin Farrell
Introduction
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Europe was experiencing the effects and influences of several intellectual movements and political revolutions. This early period of feminism was not characterized by an organized women’s rights movement, but rather a growing change in thought. These changes in thought shaped new ideas and philosophies about women and their role in society. Gender roles were constantly defined and reconstructed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traditionally, European women were viewed as nurturing, moral agents of the family and home, but were thought to be too emotional to participate outside the home. Certainly, there were women who broke the stereotypical female mold of the time and these women excelled as professionals, artists, and writers. Unfortunately, the majority of European women were portrayed as weak beings that were easily influenced. This depiction largely contributed to the debasement and wide spread oppression of women across Europe.
Influences on Gender Roles
The Romantic Movement was detrimental to women in many ways because it created a feminine ideal that painted a rigid image of desired qualities that European women should embody. Through literature and art, women were portrayed almost entirely in terms of appearance and were frequently described as delicate objects to be admired by men. Ultimately, Romanticism pressured women to be beautiful and refined because society designated these superficial qualities to be the most essential to women (1). In Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she explains that the behaviors and capabilities of women are a result of socialization, specifically the product of a “civil society [that] renders them insignificant objects of desire" (2). It may be accurate to say that men purposefully reduced women to mere objects of beauty, in order to diminish their strengths, influence, and power which caused them to become exclusively dependent on men.
The age of Enlightenment, which promoted progress, science, and reason, provided new opportunities and freedoms for men, but notably omitted women. One would think that this critical analysis and evaluation of traditional institutions and society would result in a re-evaluation of gender roles, but in reality it was quite the opposite. Enlightenment as a whole downgraded the status of women in order to highlight new freedoms for men (3). Paradoxically, in an era of progress, social change, and questioning of authority, women were still constructed to fit a relatively traditional mold. New legislation called for universal and free education of both males and females, but the quality of education available to females was lacking. Not surprisingly domestic skills were emphasized and taught because they were said to help create better wives and expand the moral development of women (4). While the study of philosophy and science became increasingly popular, they were seen as disciplines only suitable to men. Furthermore, some argue that the rise of capitalism aided in the degradation of women because of the formation of numerous laws that restricted rights to own property and run businesses, thus causing women to become financially dependent upon men (5).
The last decade of the eighteenth century was marked by the French Revolution, which overturned the feudal system, thus creating a new constitution and government in France. The French Revolution sparked radical ideas that were far ahead of their time, including universal education and suffrage. At this time, the National Assembly, which was a transitional body of government from 1789 to 1791, held the power to create a new constitution that could create drastic social and political change (6). In fact, the Assembly debated on the political rights of women and the lower classes of society. In the end, the Assembly declared that women would not have the right to vote, claiming that “Those who contribute nothing to the public establishment should have no direct influence on government (7). In somewhat of a response to these decisions, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women was established in 1793 to advocate the importance of public morality and proper education of all females. This proposed education would help women understand the basic principles of the constitution and laws of the new government. The society aimed to overcome the enemies of the new French Republic, in addition to promoting that women should be involved in politics (8). This radical club for women was shut down by authorities only six months after being established because it was seen as dangerous to society.
The industrial revolution, which was signified by a shift in economy and lifestyle, began to occur in many parts of Western Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. Poor landless peasants began to move away from the countryside in hopes of obtaining industrial or factory jobs. This process of urbanization and industrialization plainly disassociated the home from the workplace. Thus, gender roles became easily distinguishable, obvious, and separate. Men were expected to work outside the home in order to financially provide for their families. On the contrary, women were confined to the home to care for children and complete domestic tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Middle and upper class women were meant to serve as decorations and “symbols of their husbands’ economic success (9). Lower class women, on the other hand, were able to become more independent due to mass production that required an immense number of laborers. Thus, some women became wage laborers in factories, which allowed them to acquire their own income. However, most working women were underpaid, obligated to work in poor conditions, and handed over their earnings to their husbands because this money technically belonged to them (10).
Perhaps the most significant influence on gender roles was the church, which repeatedly twisted scripture in order to degrade women and promote male dominance. Consequently, the church upheld a concept of female inferiority, which explained that women were created purposefully inferior to serve their husbands. The church argued that God deliberately placed women as subordinates; for instance, God created Eve under the command of Adam (11). The concept of Christian patriarchalism, in which God meant for men to function as the head of the household to protect and provide for his family, led to a general belief that men were superior in all aspects of life (12). It is evident that a patriarchal society prevailed in Europe, in consequence of men serving primarily as workers and public figures, while women maintained their purity through isolation from the outside world. According to the church, women could only achieve spiritual fulfillment through the sacrament of marriage and the satisfaction of bearing many children. Not surprisingly, the church was publicly against the feminist movement because the advancement of women would “destabilize the traditional family" (13). Out of fear of the increasing interest in women’s rights, priests warned parishioners of the dangers of gender equality in their weekly sermons.
Significant People
Jean Jacqu
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and feminist philosopher who was determined to prove that women were equal to men in all aspects, except physically. In particular, Wollstonecraft exerted most of her energy on the promotion of equality in education and marriage. Wollstonecraft calls for the equality of men and women in many areas in her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792. In this book, she takes a sociological approach to the inferior status of women, claiming that distinctions between genders in society were not natural, but rather formed and manipulated by society (18). Wollstonecraft contradicted Rousseau’s belief that men and women were naturally different and possessed dissimilar capabilities. She firmly believed that women appeared intellectually inferior because they were not given equal educational opportunities. Thus, women were at a disadvantage, not because they were innately less intelligent, but because society withheld education from them, which shaped passive, delicate, and seemingly weak women. In other words, Wollstonecraft insisted that women were forced into inferior roles due to the implication of society that they must conform and behave a certain way (19).
Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright who played an active role in the French Revolution. She argued that the motto of the French Republic, “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” should apply to women as well as men. De Gouges believed that the rights of women were natural and inalienable; therefore she advocated for legal equality of the sexes, in addition to more job opportunities and better education for women. Her most noteworthy work, entitled Declaration of the Rights of Woman, criticized the fundamental document of the French Revolution, Declaration of the Rights of Man, for neglecting women. In the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, De Gouges explicitly extends the rights of males to those of females. She argued that women played a significant role in the revolution and should therefore benefit equally to men, specifically in terms of the attainment of new freedoms and rights. In the postscript of her declaration, she calls for all women to stop being idle and passive and to take action instead. In 1793, Olympe de Gouges was charged with writing works that provoked people and therefore threatened the security of the government. She was too radical for her time and for this reason she was found guilty of these charges and sentenced to death at age forty five (20).
Important Primary Source Documents
1. Declaration of the Rights of Woman by Olympe de Gouges, 1791 (21).
Ø Selected quotations:
a. “Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties.”
b. “The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.”
c. “The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.”
d. “The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all.”
e. “Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies.”
Ø Complete Source:
The Rights of Woman
Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to opress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that nature with whom you seem to want to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an example of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and surrender to the evidence when I offer you the means; search, probe, and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious togetherness in this immortal masterpiece.
Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated--in a century of enlightenment and wisdom--into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
For the National Assembly to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next legislature:Preamble
Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the authoritative acts of women and the authoritative acts of men may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all political institutions; and in order that citizens' demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all.Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Woman and of Female Citizens.
Article I
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility.Article II
The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.Article III
The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly from it (the nation).Article IV
Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.Article V
Laws of nature and reason proscribe all acts harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not command.Article VI
The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.Article VII
No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained in cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this rigorous law.Article VIII
The law must establish only those penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary...Article IX
Once any woman is declared guilty, complete rigor is exercised by law.Article X
No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order.Article XI
The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of woman, since that liberty assures recognition of children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus may say freely, I am the mother of a child which belongs to you, without being forced by a barbarous prejudice to hide the truth; (an exception may be made) to respond to the abuse of this liberty in cases determined by law.Article XII
The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.Article XIII
For the support of the public force and the expenses of administration, the contributions of woman and man are equal; she shares all the duties and all the painful tasks; therefore, we must have the same share in the distribution of positions, employment, offices, honors, and jobs.Article XIV
Female and male citizens have the right to verify, either by themselves of through their representatives, the necessity of the public contribution. This can only apply to women if they are granted an equal share, not only of wealth, but also of public administration, and in the determination of the proportion, the base, the collection, and the duration of the tax.Article XV
The collectivity of women, joined for tax purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to demand an accounting of his administration from any public agent.Article XVI
No society has a constitution without the guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; the constitution is null if the majority of individuals comprising the nation have not cooperated in drafting it.Article XVII
Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right no one can be deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of nature, unless the legally determined public need obviously dictates it, and then only with a just and prior indemnity.Postscript
Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. In the centuries of corruption you ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread from such a fine undertaking? The bon mot of the legislator of the marriage of Cana? Do you fear that our French legislators, correctors of that morality, long ensnared by political practices now out of date, will only say again to you: women, what is there in common between you and us? Everything, you will have to answer. If they persist in their weakness in putting this non sequitur in contradiction to their principles, courageously oppose the force of reason to the empty pretentions of superiority; unite yourselves beneath the standards of philosophy; deploy all the energy of your character, and you will soon see these haughty men, not groveling at your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share with you the treasures of the Supreme Being. Regardless of what barriers confront you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to want to....Marriage is the tomb of trust and love. The married woman can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth which does not belong to them. The woman who is unmarried has only one feeble right; ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her children the right to the name and the wealth of their father; no new laws have been made in this matter. If it is considered a paradox and impossibility on my part to try to give my sex an honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men to attain glory for dealing with this matter; but while we wait, the way can be prepared through national education, the restoration of morals, and conjugal conventions.
2. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 (22).
Ø Selected quotations:
a. “In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of Nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied, and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural preeminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment.”
b. “I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.”
c. “The only way women can rise in the world--by marriage.”
d. “The instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society to render them insignificant objects of desire--mere propagators of fools!”
e. “There is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength must render them in some degree dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?”
Ø Excerpt about equal education for women:
After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilisation which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?--a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the wand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilised women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, by their abilities and virtues exact respect.
In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked, especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand.
Yet, because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose that I mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the quality or inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of Nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied, and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural preeminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow-creatures who find amusement in their society.
I am aware of an obvious inference. From every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women, but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raises females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind, all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine.
This discussion naturally divides the subject. I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties; and afterwards I shall more particularly point out their peculiar designation.
I wish also to steer clear of an error which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to ladies, if the little indirect advice that is scattered through "Sandford Merton" be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, use they appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity, have been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim pity; the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice, of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in Nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement.
But as I purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of society, and of the moral character of women in each, this hint is for the present sufficient; and I have only alluded to the subject because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and those beings who are only the objects of pity, and that of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. Dismissing, then, those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex, and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.
This is a rough sketch of my plan; and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, or in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation. These pretty superlatives, dropping glibly from the tongue vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and overstretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action.
The education of women has of late been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves--the only way women can rise in the world--by marriage. And this desire making mere animals; of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act,--they dress, they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio! Can they be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world ?
If, then, it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct, of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and; enlarge the soul, that the instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society to render them insignificant objects of desire--mere propagators of fools!--if it can be proved that in aiming to accomplish them without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over, I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable.
Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear; there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength must render them in some degree dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannise, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker understandings. It seems scarcely necessary to say that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.
Footnotes:
1. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 109.
2. Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929. The Western Experience, CD-ROM.
3. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 108.
4. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007),
5. Women During the European Enlightenment. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/WOMEN.HTM
6. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007),
7. Mortimer Chambers, et all, The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007),
8. http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/481/
9. “WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
10.“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
11.“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
12. Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 68-73.
13. “WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009).
14. Helena Rosenblatt, "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002. French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009).
15. “Teaching Women’s Rights from Past to Present,” Women in World History Curriculum, 1996, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/womenRightsHome.html (November 17, 2009).
16. Charles S. Clark, "Education and Gender,” CQ Researcher Online 4, no. 21 (June 3, 1994): 481-504. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher /cqresrre1994060300 (November 19, 2009).
17. Helena Rosenblatt, "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002. French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009).
18. Erwin J Haeberle, “The Beginnings of Feminism in Europe,” 1981, http://www2.huberlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/the_beginnings_of_feminism_in_html, (November 17, 2009).
19.“Mary Wollstonecraft on Education,” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/wollstonecraft.htm, (November 16, 2009).
20. Kate Lindemann, “Olympe de Gouges,” Women-philosophers.com, http://www.women-philosophers.com/Olympe-de-Gouges.html, (November 19, 2009).
21. Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” 1791. Darline Gay Levy, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1980), 87-96, http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/decwom2.html, (November 17, 2009).
22. Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929. The Western Experience, CD-ROM.
Feminism 1820 to 1850
-Becky Putzer
Although most of the women’s movements took place in Great Britain during 1820 to 1850, there are some notable women from other parts of Europe. Louise Otto is considered “mother of the German women’s movement” because she used her literary skills to spread ideas to help working German women.(1) Flora Tristan also advocated for working women, but she was focused on French women. She believed that because women were degraded in the working and domestic sphere they “eroded working-class strength.”(2) Interestingly Tristan did not conclude that women should be excluded from the workplace because of this. Instead she urged working men and women to unite for the cause of women, “which in the long run would be the cause of all.”(3) Finally, Carolina Coronado challenged Spanish traditional restrictions on women and likened confinement to the home to being imprisoned. (4)
In Great Britain both men and women spoke and wrote in favor for women’s political rights. William Thompson wrote an appeal that defended women’s rights against James Mill’s Article on Government. Thompson was an Owenite which gave him more freedom to write about women’s sexuality and their right to sexual satisfaction. He also argued that women had separate interests that should be pursued outside of their husbands’ or fathers’ areas of interest. Thompson’s Appeal is interesting because it looks at women in different roles besides wives and mothers. He divides them into wives, adult daughters in their father’s house, and women without fathers or husbands. He acknowledged that women in different stages of life have different needs, but that all of them share repression by males in society. Thompson was a supporter of women’s political representation and even
Harriet Martineau also was an advocate for women’s representation in government. She believed that the government should not make laws concerning women without their direct involvement through representation.(6) This very rational idea was spurred on Harriet’s own life experiences. She was unmarried, fatherless and had no formal education. In society she had no rights or voice and very little opportunity to better herself. Other women such as Caroline Norton would also use their own experiences to gain ground in women’s rights.
Both Harriet Martineau and Caroline Norton were prominent and influential women in the English women’s movement during the 1820s to 1850s. Something that struck me when researching them was their adherence to traditional roles of women. Caroline Norton said that women have ‘a right…to the protection of man’ and that women should be granted rights by men in order to be protected by them, not to be autonomous.(8) Harriet Martineau also did not break away from social norms of women because her arguments for women’s education suggest that rational learning would help them to perform domestic tasks better. She also accepted the double standard that women who acted outside sexual norms were to be avoided, but men were almost expected to do so.(9) From the twenty first century perspective these women look less revolutionary because of their traditional beliefs, but it is important to realize that no one can step outside the time they live in. Norton and Martineau worked with what they believed was a woman’s place in society and focused on getting protection and rights through male authority figures.
The women’s movement in Britain was closely connected with the abolition movement from the 1820s onward. Harriet Martineau was influenced by American abolitionists on her several visits to the country. While women were advocating for the freedom of slaves, they also spoke about rights for themselves and many women drew similarities between women and slaves to strengthen their point.(10) Political representation for women was also a main focus of the British movement. Women had to combat views like James Mill’s that women did not need representation except through their husbands or fathers. Another argument for keeping women out of public and political life was the “women’s mission”(11) This was the idea supported by the church that women’s place was in the home being a moral leader for her family. By changing her family, a woman could change society with the efforts of all other mothers and wives. This challenge to mothers offers an interesting double standard: that women were naturally subordinate to men, but they were the best suited to lead the men morally. It inadvertently opened the door for women to have more authority in the home but putting them in charge of part of the well being of the family.(12)
In France the Saint-Simonian women’s movement was the most prominent and sophisticated. It focused on the whole range of women’s issues rather than focusing on just one such as working women’s rights as had been the focus for other feminists in Europe. It also “unified the economic, emotional, domestic and political issues in women’s lives.”(13) This helped to encourage Saint-Simonian followers to act on their principles and continue to influence women’s politics.
Footnotes:
1. Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, ed.,Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 106.
2. Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1989), 176.
3. Smith, page 176.
4. Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, page 247.
5. From William Thompson’s Appeal as cited in Barbara Caine, English Feminism 1780-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 59.
6. Caine, page 73.
7. From the Infants Custody Act as cited in Caine, page 68.
8. From Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women, page 165 as cited in Caine, page 69.
9. Caine, page 72.
10. Caine, page 76.
11. Caine, page 82.
12. Caine, page 83.
13. Smith, page 176.
Feminism 1850-1880
-Allyson Obermeier
Feminism in the time period from approximately 1850 to 1880 was notably different from prior feminist movements in several ways. First of all, feminism at this time was largely a middle class movement. The upper classes still enjoyed many rights and privileges and didn’t feel enough of a need to agitate, while lower class women were too occupied with working and surviving to have time for the organization and time required to fight for their rights.(1) It is also important to note that because of industrialization, the middle class was growing in many areas of Europe at this time. As families moved into the middle class, women watched their husbands gain such rights as suffrage and education, while they were not granted the same rights.(2)
Another change in feminism during this period is the growth of organizations focused specifically on woman and their struggle for equality. Women’s rights movements used to be tied into other social movements, such as anti-slavery societies and utopian socialist groups.(3) Feminism was also strongly connected to liberalism. Where and when liberal governments or sentiments were strong, feminism flourished. This usually occurred during revolutions, when conservative patriarchal governments were weakened, and was stronger where liberal regimes challenged tradition and placed greater importance on the individual(4) A popular idea in the nineteenth century was that of progress: society would get increasingly better. Some liberal thinkers argued that society could not continue in its progress without the emancipation of women.(5)
The goals of the European feminist movement from 1850 to 1880 are reflected by the designation “equal rights movement.” The women in these movements wanted to gain the same legal and political rights as men.(6) More specifically, they wanted married women to have the rights to their own property and earnings and custody of their children, all of which were legally controlled by the husband.(7) They also believed single women should be able to get good careers with enough wages to support themselves independently. Education of women was crucial to the movement’s success, because women needed to be educated to be politically and financially responsible, and to prove that they were intellectually equal to men.(8) Early in this period, suffrage was not a goal voiced my many women because it was still considered relatively radical. However, by the 1860s and 1870s, women’s suffrage was increasingly becoming the focus of many women’s rights movements.
A well known feminist reformer in this period was Louise Dittmar. She founded the journal Soziale Reform which dealt with many issues of social reform, including women’s emancipation. She also published several other works on women’s issues in the 1840s. Her journal ran four issues in 1849, but by 1850 she could no longer find a publisher who dared to print her radical opinions in the conservative climate of post-revolution Germany.(13) Feminism in Germany was suppressed by the conservative government and had little real effect for several decades after the 1848 revolutions were suppressed.
The connections between feminism and liberalism can also be seen in France. Feminism grew during the revolutions of 1848 and 1871, but declined especially during the Second Empire beginning in 1852.(14) In the 1860s though, feminism began to reemerge as one of the many organizations in opposition to the empire. The work of feminists during this period ultimately resulted in the first International Congress on Women’s Rights being held in Paris in 1878.(15)
Unlike the rest of Europe, women’s equality movements were very strong in England in the period from 1850 to 1880. One reason for this is that England was not ruled by a heavily conservative government in this period, as was much of the rest of Europe. There are several very well known English feminists, including Harriet Taylor Mill and her husband John Stuart Mill. Harriet Taylor Mill famously compared the status of women in comparison to men to that of slaves to masters. She believed in the full and natural equality of women and promoted women’s complete independence.(16) Her second husband, John Stuart Mill is better known in the feminist movement, though he admits that he got most of his ideas from his wife in his 1869 book, The Subjugation of Women.(17) In 1867 he attempted to get the wording of a voting bill in Parliament changed from “man” to “person,” but was unsuccessful.
The Langham Place Group evolved out of Smith’s committee in 1866. This new group represented a broader women’s rights movement, which took many actions to improve the status of women in British society. The group published the Englishwoman’s Journal and established the Victoria Press to print it.(20) Both the journal and the press were run and staffed only by women. They founded the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, which served to train women for wage-earning jobs. They also opened the Ladies’ Institute, which served as a “public sphere” for women to gather and have discussions, much as coffee shops had served men during the Enlightenment. Legally, the Langham Place Group successfully persuaded Parliament to grant women rights to their earnings in 1878 and their property in 1882.(21) They also founded women’s colleges, and gained women the right to attend colleges at Oxford and Cambridge in 1870.
The accomplishments of the women’s movement in England were the realization of many of the goals of feminism in this period: rights to property and earnings, education, and career qualification. It is amazing to see what the Langham Place Group was able to accomplish in only about two decades. It is also important to notice these accomplishments compared with the stagnation of women’s rights in much of the rest of Europe. The lack of a repressive, conservative government allowed reformation in England that wasn’t possible on the Continent.
Footnotes
1. Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A History of Their Own, Volume II: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 356.
2. Ibid.
3. Marlene LeGates, In Their Time, (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 197.
4. Anderson and Zinsser, 353.
5. LeGates, 198.
6. Anderson and Zinsser, 350.
7. LeGates, 202, 208.
8. Bonnie Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55-56.
9. Ann Taylor Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911,” History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1982), 319.
10. Ibid.
11. Allen, 320.
12. Allen, 324-325.
13. Herzog Dagmar, “Dittmar, Louise, (1807-1884),” Ohio University, http://www.ohio.edu/Chastain/dh/ditt.htm..
14. Anderson and Zinsser, 353.
15. Women, Power, and Politics Online Exhibition, “1878 Women’s Rights Conference: The Long History of Women’s Struggle for Equality,” the International Museum of Women, http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1874
16. Bonnie G. Smith, ed., “Mill, Harriet Taylor,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, vol. 3, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 240.
17. Anderson and Zinsser, 358.
18. Anderson and Zinsser, 360.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Anderson and Zinsser, 361.
Feminism: 1880-1914
Amanda Lund
Introduction
The final phase of feminism studied in this essay occurs from 1880-1914. This time in Europe was filled with mixed emotions around post-enlightenment thinking and anxieties over newly formed gender roles. Feelings of rupture, randomness, scientific objectivity, pessimism, alienation, and anxiety plagued the people as their future seemed to be unknown. “This new relationship to time, space, and history pervaded literature, the arts, and the social and natural sciences in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century”.(1) Was industrialization changing the workplace? Feminists at this time would probably answer yes, with emotions of high-spirits and optimism to the possibilities their future held.
The Origins of the Family
This phase provided women with opportunities to reshape their role in politics, the workplace, and the family. This is why feminists looked to this with optimism and a sense of intellectual empowerment instead of anxiety and fear like much of the rest of society, mostly men. This period sparked “. . . intellectual controversies over the origins of the family, patriarchy & the subordination of women."(2) Was a patriarchal or matriarchal system best? Which system first originated and which system must stay?
Since the majority of scholarly writers up until this time were men, they often portrayed a similar belief and argument in their language. Often times this language was centered on a society which was run with women being inferior to men with roles within the home under the subordination of their husbands or fathers. Feminist creativity was now at a peak and the traditional patriarchal familial system of men at the center and women subordinated was about to be questioned. Many feminists of this time wrote with questions of the true origins of the family. They believed that a matriarchal family with women at the center, the sole child bearers and caregivers was most successful and the original foundation of the family. “During the period from 1860-1890, the explosive expansion of data on human societies past and present provided the basis for the first evolutionary theories of the origins and development of the family”.. (3) These new theories began the debate about how the family was set up and furthered with the rising popularity of science.
Around the turn of the century “a turn to cultural relativism in the social sciences called all such paradigms – including the superiority of Western forms of the family – into question”. (4) So, not only was patriarchal system argued against a matriarchal system, all Western or “superior” forms of society, and family was beginning to be critiqued. This gave feminists of this time fuel to questioning the traditional role of males as superior heads of the family. Here we see major changes taking place in the rejections of Western-thought, and majorly changing gender roles.
So, to put this time period into a more detailed experience, we will start with some background information. Up until this point, the 1860s provided definitions of the family from mainly a male perspective. Most “works (chiefly written by male intellectuals) claimed that patriarchy had existed throughout human history". (5) These writings said that the natural order of things occurred with the subordination of women and this has been proven from the earliest of societies. They looked to prehistory and tradition to support their arguments, such as the Bible and the Old Testament or other classical societies. Although, at the end of this period we see the enlightenment taking its toll on such ideals that traditionally went unquestioned.
At the turn of the 19th Century we see “the authority of biblical and classical texts as sources for the origins of human society now discredited, and the focus of research shifted to existing non-Western societies, which seemed to offer more reliable insights into the period of human development now known as prehistory”. (6) The enlightenment brought ideas of progress and individualism into the light. Ideas of the family originating from female promiscuity, to the continuing argument over matriarchy and patriarchy, we see the questioning continue.
All in all, this period can be summarized as a time when “feminists, anthropologists and historians attempt to understand the historical roots of women’s subordination. Was it a natural state caused by her maternal needs or a political arrangement dictated by powerful men who imposed domesticity on women?” (7) The answer to this lies in the changes made within society resulting in most European societies organizing social relations as a historical process in which the “maternal dilemma” was not something controlled by nature. When looking at feminist’s role in this historical process we can confidentially say that they argued that “women should not become mothers under conditions of inequality or servitude”. (8) Most feminists used this argument as the basis for their research and proactive manner. They also used this argument to support their ideas of the origins of the family. Feminists at this time were pushing for motherhood to be recognized as a role that can be arranged along many different lines in many different ways.
The years between 1900 and 1914 brought forth many changes for women. The traditional arguments over the origins of family, motherhood, and natural selection were now being somewhat pushed aside as many women’s rights and equality groups took charge. Women were beginning to be re-inducted into the workplace; the rights of divorce were re-introduced, as well as much other legalities. This time period was the beginning of a major movement towards equality for the sexes. (12)
Important People
Sigmund Freud was another popular theorist of this time. His ideas correlated with Feminist
All of the major influential individuals during this time varied greatly on ideas of gender roles, origins of the family, and human evolution. This time was characterized by great discoveries and the questioning of traditional and western ideas. Feminism fit in perfectly when these groups questioned the role and treatment of women and protested equality in the workplace and the home. The progress of this time signals a great movement for the future of society and treatment of women.
Important Primary Source:
A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Crandworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill, Caroline Norton. (11)
A LETTER TO THE QUEEN ON LORD CHANCELLOR CRANWORTH'S MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE BILL
BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON.
"Only a woman's hair." THACKERAY'S LECTURE ON SWIFT.
LONDON:LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS.
1855. [THE AUTHOR RESERVES THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION.]
A LETTER TO THE QUEEN
MADAM,
On Tuesday, June 13th, of last session, Lord Chancellor Cranworth brought forward a measure for the reform of the Marriage laws of England; which measure was afterwards withdrawn. In March, 1855, in this present session, the Solicitor General stated, that a bill on the same subject was "nearly prepared," and would be brought forward "immediately after the Easter recess." On May 10th, being pressed to name a time, he stated that it would be proposed " as soon as the House had expressed an opinion on the Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill." That time has not arrived: and meanwhile,--as one who has grievously suffered, and is still suffering, under the present imperfect state of the law,--I address your Majesty on the subject.
It is not so. Your Majesty is Queen of England; Head of the Church; Head of the Law; Ruler of millions of men; and the assembled Senate who meet to debate and frame legislative enactments in each succeeding year, begin their sessional labours by reverently listening to that clear woman's voice,--rebellion against whose command is treason.
In the year 1845, on the occasion of the opening of the new Hall of Lincoln's Inn, your Majesty honoured that Hall with your presence: when His Royal Highness Prince Albert was invited to become a Barrister: "the keeping of his terms and exercises, and the payment of all fees and expenses, being dispensed with." It was an occasion of great pomp and rejoicing. No reigning sovereign had visited the Inns of Court since Charles II., in 1671. In the magnificent library of Lincoln's Inn, seated on a chair of state (Prince Albert standing), your Majesty held a levee; and received an address from the benchers, barristers, and students-at-law, which was read by the treasurer on his knee: thanking your Majesty for the proof given by your presence of your "gracious regard for the profession of the law,"--offering congratulations "on the great amendments of the law,
its means the wild liberty he enjoys, with some rude form of polity and order.
Madam,--I will not do your Majesty the injustice of supposing, that the very different aspect the law wears in England for the female sovereign and the female subject, must render you indifferent to what those subjects may suffer; or what reform may be proposed, in the rules more immediately affecting them. I therefore submit a brief and familiar exposition of the laws relating to women,--as taught and practised in those Inns of Court, where your Majesty received homage, and Prince Albert was elected a Bencher.
A married woman in England has no legal existence: her being is absorbed in that of her husband. Years of separation of desertion cannot alter this position. Unless divorced by special enactment in the House of Lords, the legal fiction holds her to be "one" with her husband, even though she may never see or hear of him.
She has no possessions, unless by special settlement; her property is his property. Lord Ellenborough mentions a case in which a sailor bequeathed "all he was worth" to a woman he
cohabited with; and afterwards married, in the West Indies, a woman of considerable fortune. At this man's death it was held,--notwithstanding the hardship of the case,--that the will swept away from his widow, in favour of his mistress, every shilling of the property. It is now provided that a will shall be revoked by marriage: but the claim of the husband to all that is his wife's exists in full force. An English wife has no legal right even to her clothes and ornaments; her husband may take them and sell them if he pleases, even though they be the gifts of relatives or friends, or bought before marriage.
An English wife cannot make a will. She may have children or kindred whom she may earnestly desire to benefit;--she may be separated from her husband, who may be living with a mistress; no matter: the law gives what she has to him, and no will she could make would be valid.
An English wife cannot legally claim her own earnings. Whether wages for manual labour, or payment for intellectual exertion, whether she weed potatoes, or keep a school, her salary is the husband's; and he could compel a second payment, and treat the first as void, if paid to the wife without his sanction.
An English wife may not leave her husband's
house. Not only can he sue her for "restitution of conjugal rights," but he has a right to enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge, and who may "harbour her,"--as it is termed,--and carry her away by force, with or without the aid of the police.
If the wife sue for separation for cruelty, it must be "cruelty that endangers life or limb," and if she has once forgiven, or, in legal phrase, "condoned" his offences, she cannot plead them; though her past forgiveness only proves that she endured as long as endurance was possible.
If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself. She has no means of proving the falsehood of his allegations. She is not represented by attorney, nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit between him and her supposed lover, for "damages." Lord Brougham affirmed in the House of Lords: "in that action the character of the woman was at immediate issue, although she was not prosecuted. The consequence not unfrequently was, that the character of a woman was sworn away; instances were known in which, by collusion between the husband and a pretended paramour, the character of the wife has been destroyed. All this could take
place, and yet the wife had no defence; she was excluded from Westminster-hall, and behind her back, by the principles of our jurisprudence, her character was tried between her husband and the man called her paramour."
If an English wife be guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but she cannot divorce the husband a vinculo, however profligate he may be. No law court can divorce in England. A special Act of Parliament annulling the marriage, is passed for each case. The House of Lords grants this almost as a matter of course to the husband, but not to the wife. In only four instances (two of which were cases of incest), has the wife obtained a divorce to marry again.
She cannot prosecute for a libel. Her husband must prosecute; and in cases of enmity and separation, of course she is without a remedy.
She cannot sign a lease, or transact responsible business.
She cannot claim support, as a matter of personal right, from her husband. The general belief and nominal rule is, that her husband is "bound to maintain her." That is not the law. He is not bound to her. He is bound to his
country; bound to see that she does not cumber the parish in which she resides. If it be proved that means sufficient are at her disposal, from relatives or friends, her husband is quit of his obligation, and need not contribute a farthing: even if he have deserted her; or be in receipt of money which is hers by inheritance.
She cannot bind her husband by any agreement, except through a third party. A contract formally drawn out by a lawyer,--witnessed, and signed by her husband,--is void in law; and he can evade payment of an income so assured, by the legal quibble that "a man cannot contract with his own wife."
Separation from her husband by consent, or for his ill usage, does not alter their mutual relation. He retains the right to divorce her after separation,--as before,--though he himself be unfaithful.
Her being, on the other hand, of spotless character, and without reproach, gives her no advantage in law. She may have withdrawn from his roof knowing that he lives with "his faithful housekeeper": having suffered personal violence at his hands; having "condoned" much, and being able to prove it by unimpeachable testimony: or he may have shut the doors
way-side inn. He is two hundred miles away from his real home. He came from the thrifty North, and will plod back there with his savings. Return? No! he will never return. The sharp knife is out--his blood sinks in the short turf where the moorland sheep have been feeding; his moan is lost on the midnight breeze; and his pack is stolen. Is there no law for him? Go and listen in the assize court. There, in the hot glow of summer, amid the buzz of insects and voices, and the loud oratory of declaiming men, you will hear the stillness of that murderous night described; and how its silence and darkness, and the lonely stretch of the apparently deserted heath, failed to shield the modern Cain from the observation of that one "chance witness," whom God seems ever to leave standing sentinel to watch for undiscovered crime. Who would have thought the treasure of that poor pedlar's pack was worth two men's lives? Yet one was taken by murder, and now this other is forfeited to Justice; to prove--that the poorest of the Queen's subjects shall not wander on her highways without the same protection of life and property, that guards the fringed canopy of a duke's bed!
Protection for life and property. Is that all?
Is happiness nothing? Is reputation nothing? Is the law only able to ward off the assassin's knife, or make restitution of stolen coin? Is it able to protect the poorest, the meanest, the most apparently helpless persons in the realm, and not able to protect women? Are the only laws in England "so surrounded with difficulty" that they cannot possibly be re-modelled to any pattern of equal justice, the laws between man and wife?
I think not. I think if men would approach them with the same impartial wish to make rules of protection, that is brought to bear on other subjects, they would find the same facility in applying those rules.
Now, with respect to the condition and effect of the laws for women in Scotland, it came out incidentally in the debate on the Marriage Bill, that the total amount of all the divorces in that misguided country, during the last five years, only averaged twenty in all classes; and this was not stated in defence of Scotch morality, but as a means of calculating what might be expected in England under a new system.
In Scotland, then, though the right of divorce be equal,--and the process so easy that even if the party accused left the kingdom, he or she
could still be proceeded against by what was termed "edictal citation,"--(or reading the citation aloud at the market-cross of Edinburgh, and the pier and shore of Leith), an average of twenty couples only, availed themselves of the law, the existence of which so alarms English legislators.
Very sparing, indeed, are the cases recorded as disputed precedents. Towards the end of the last century the Duchess of Hamilton divorced the Duke, as a Scotchman, though married by English ritual in England. In 1810, Lady Paget divorced Lord Paget, though he pleaded a reconciliation after his original desertion. In 1813, Catherine Pollock divorced Russell Manners, for desertion for ten years andinfidelity. Previous to which cases, Sir T. Wallace Dunlop had the singular good fortune of being proceeded against for divorce by both his first and second wife. The first wife succeeded; but the second failed; not for want of proof of his misconduct, but because her marriage was held to be an English marriage, and so, indissoluble by the Scotch Courts.
It is expressly stated that the number of Scotch cases in proportion to the population, remained nearly the same at all periods, since
the Commissioners were appointed in 1563 down to the present time; and that the conjugal relation "stood not less, but infinitely more sacred and secure in Scotland" since total divorce was made possible, in lieu of separation under ecclesiastical law. Indeed, it will scarcely be urged that it is a more favourable condition for morality, that a woman should remain for life nominally married to a man who has deserted her (as under the English law), than that she should have power to divorce him and marry again, as under the Scotch law.
But Lord Chancellor Cranworth argued the question in a very singular manner; and I give his argument as it stands in the printed report of the debate of June 14, 1854:--First, as to the lighter causes of divorce, admitted in Scotland, he says:--"If marriages could be dissolved for cruelty or desertion, the husband may dissolve his marriage whenever he pleases; he has only to be tyrannical to his wife, or to desert her, to effect the very object he has in view. Therefore I do not at all propose to alter what has been--I will not say the law,--because in point of fact there has been no law--but the practice on this subject."
Then, as to that graver interruption of domestic quiet, inconstancy, he says:--
"If adultery on the part of the husband is to entitle him to a divorce,--inasmuch as the husband (which may be bad morality, but it is the fact) suffers little on that account in the opinion of the world at large (for it is notorious that, while the wife who commits adultery loses her station in society, that punishment is not awarded to the husband who is guilty of the same crime) he may, without any great sacrifice on his own part, but by merely being a little profligate, get rid of his wife whenever he chooses to do so."
And Lord Campbell, in a subsequent debate, July 1, strikes out another suggestion; he objects to granting divorces to women, on account of the ease with which adultery in the husband is (or ought to be) forgiven by the wife!
"He thought his noble and learned friend had wisely abstained from following the example of Scotland and other countries, in which the wife had a right to have the marriage dissolved on account of the adultery of the husband. The moral guilt incurred by the husband was the same,--but in most cases it might be CONDONED."
In short, what between their dread of encouraging the husband to be "a little profligate," in order to get rid of his wife,--and fear of inclining the wife to be unforgiving, in the prospect of getting rid of her husband,--they think it best that justice should be not merely impro-
bable, as at present, but made utterly impossible for the woman to obtain.
Again I say, it is perfectly marvellous what clever and honourable men will say and do when blinded by strong prejudice! Here are these two great lawyers talking as though the divorce of the wife could be made compulsory on the wife, or dependant on her simple resolution. Is the wife, after all, to be her own judge? No; the judge is her judge; the Lord Chancellor himself is her judge; the House of Lords is her judge. The possibility of applying for a divorce a vinculo, does not suddenly invest her with an authority like that of the patriarch Abraham, to send forth her husband, like weeping Hagar, into the desert world. She is to apply for her divorce to the judicial tribunal: to that Chancellor who speaks of an adulterous husband as being "a little profligate:" to that House of Lords which has entertained feminine applications with so much jealousy and reluctance, that there have been but four cases (two of them cases of incest), in which the wife's petition for divorce has ever been granted. With these judges, and not with the wife, rests the decision whether she has refused that indulgence which ought to be a part of her nature, and is the principal charm of her sex,
to the former speeches of men like Lyndhurst and Brougham,--whose celebrity began so early in life, that they are still here to enjoy and add to it; though their youthful triumphs are almost a matter of history to the rising generation. All this, women may study: and when they have read all which they have time, patience, or inclination to read, and ability to understand,--they may take their crochet-work, embroidery, or "Potichomanie," and ruminate over their needles and paste-brushes, how it is that laws continue to be in force, which such men themselves have so repeatedly condemned, as a mass of folly, indecency, and contradiction!
I hope, during this period of tranquil reflection, the rebellious thought may not occur to the tapestry-working sex, that the obstacle to this legal reform must be, that men fear to curb the license of their own pleasures. It is impossible, seeing how eager, energetic, and enthusiastic, men are in other reforms whose necessity is once proved and admitted, not to fancy that the reason why this particular change is "so surrounded with difficulty" is because it is extremely unpalatable to the reformers! I think--to use the words of the Solicitor-General--
the House "will express an opinion on the Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill" with infinitely more speed, clearness, and decision, than on a Marriage Reform Bill. Every man seems to dread that he is surrendering some portion of his own rights over woman, in allowing these laws to be revised; even while he admits that abuses which are "a disgrace to England," blot the strange barbarous code, which remains intact while other barbarous laws have gradually been repealed or altered.
To all that women can read on the subject, I add this more familiarly easy treatise; and I shall follow this treatise by a published selection of " Cases, decided according to Law, and contrary to Justice;" admitted to be so decided even by the judges and counsel engaged in them; the sentences given being often accompanied by courteous and sincere expressions of regret at their manifest oppression; and by a hope that the code might be altered, which made such sentences compulsory on the persons whose duty it was "to administer the law as they found it." My husband has taught me, by subpoenaing my publishers to account for my earnings,--that my gift of writing was not meant for the purposes to which I have hitherto applied it. It was not
intended that I should "strive for peace and ensue it" through a life of much occasional bitterness and many unjust trials; that I should prove my literary ability, by publishing melodies and songs for young girls and women to sing in happier homes than mine,--or poetry and prose for them to read in leisure hours,--or even please myself by better and more serious attempts to advocate the rights of the people, or the education and interests of the poor.
When Mr Norton allowed me, I say, to be publicly subpoenaed in court, to defend himself by a quibble from a just debt, and subpoenaed my publishers to meet me there, he taught me what my gift of writing was worth. Since he would not leave even that source tranquil and free in my destiny, let him have the triumph of being able at once to embitter and to turn its former current. He has made me dream that it was meant for a higher and stronger purpose,--that gift which came not from man, but from God. It was meant to enable me to rouse the hearts of others to examine into all the gross injustice of these laws,--to ask the "nation of gallant gentlemen," whose countrywoman I am, for once to hear a woman's pleading on the subject. Not because I deserve more at their hands
than other women. Well I know, on the contrary, how many hundreds, infinitely better than I,--more pious, more patient, and less rash under injury,--have watered their bread with tears! My plea to attention is, that in pleading for myself I am able to plead for all these others. Not that my sufferings or my deserts are greater than theirs; but that I combine, with the fact of having suffered wrong, the power to comment on and explain the cause of that wrong; which few women are able to do.
For this, I believe, God gave me the power of writing. To this I devote that power. I abjure all other writing, till I see these laws altered. I care not what ridicule or abuse may be the result of that declaration. They who cannot bear ridicule and abuse, are unfit and unable to advance any cause; and once more I deny that this is my personal cause; it is the cause of all the women of England. If I could be justified and happy tomorrow, I would still strive and labour in it; and if I were to die to-morrow, it would still be a satisfaction to me that I had so striven. Meanwhile, my husband has a legal lien (as he has publicly proved), on the copyright of my works. Let him claim the copyright of THIS:
and let the Lord Chancellor, whose office is thus described in Chamberlayne's State of England,--"To judge, not according to the Common Law, as other Civil Courts do, but to moderate the rigour of the Law, and to judge according to Equity, Conscience, and Reason: and his Oath is to do right to all manner of People, poor and rich, after the Laws and Customs of the Realm, and truly counsel the King,"--let the Lord Chancellor, I say,--the "Summa Cancellarius" of Great Britain, cancel, in Mr Norton's favour,--according to the laws and customs of this realm of England,--my right to the labour of my own brain and pen; and docket it, among forgotten Chancery Papers, with a parody of Swift's contemptuous labelling.
"Only a Woman's Pamphlet."
But let the recollection of what I write, remain with those who read; and above all, let the recollection remain with your Majesty, to whom it is addressed; the one woman in England who cannot suffer wrong; and whose royal assent will be formally necessary to any Marriage Reform Bill which the Lord Chancellor, assembled Peers, and assembled Commons, may
think fit to pass, in the Parliament of this free nation; where, with a Queen on the throne, all other married women are legally " NON-EXISTENT."
I remain, With the sincerest loyalty and respect, Your Majesty's humble and devoted Subject and Servant, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON. No. 3, CHESTERFIELD STREET, MAY FAIR, This 2nd day of June, 1855.
Footnotes
1. Allen, Ann T. "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meaning of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914." American Historical Review (Oct., 1999): 1085-1113.
2. Allen, 1190.
3. Allen, 1087.
4. Allen, 1087.
5. Allen, 1187-1198
6. Allen, 1092.
7. Walker, Pamela J. Rev. of Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890 1970, by Ann T. Allen. European History Quarterly 39 (2009): 118-19. Print.
8. Walker, 118.
9. Allen, Ann T. "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meaning of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914." American Historical Review (Oct., 1999): 1085-1113.
10. Allen, 1093-97.
11.
Caroline, Norton. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill (1855): a machine-readable transcription. Indian University, Bloomington, IN: Library Electronic Text Resource Service , 1996. (1855) Print.
12. Macknight, Elizabeth C. "Why Weren't They Feminists: Parisian Noble Women and the Campaigns for Women's Rights in France, 1880-1914." European Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 2 (2007): 127-141.
Annotated Bibliography
Allen, Ann Taylor. “Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911.” History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1982). Discusses the history of Kindergartens in Germany and how they relate to the women’s movement.
Anderson, Bonnie S. Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Has information on the education of women and the goals of the feminist movement in Europe.
Anderson, Bonnie S. and Judith P. Zinsser. A History of Their Own, Volume II: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. A good coverage of the women’s movement in several European countries, especially in England.
Caine, Barbara, English Feminism 1780-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). An analysis of feminism in England that traces significant advances from 1780 to 1980.
Chambers, Mortimer et al. The Western Experience: Volume II: Since the Sixteenth Century. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007). Reveals changing gender roles during the French Revolution.
Clark, Charles S. "Education and Gender,” CQ Researcher Online 4, no. 21. (June 3, 1994): 481- 504. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1994060300 (November 19, 2009). Provides a basic history of the education of women, specifically the views of Rousseau.
Dagmar, Herzog. “Dittmar, Louise, (1807-1884),” Ohio University, http://www.ohio.edu/Chastain/dh/ditt.htm(accessed November 2, 2009). An article about Louise Dittmar, a feminist German writer and reformer.
De Gouges, Olympe. “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” 1791. Darline Gay Levy, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795. (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1980), 87-96. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/decwom2.html (November 17, 2009). Contains the primary source, Declaration of the Rights of Woman by Olympe de Gouges.
Haeberle, Erwin J. “The Beginnings of Feminism in Europe,” 1981. http://www2.huberlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/the_beginnings_of_feminism_in_ht ml, (November 17, 2009). A summary of the beginning of the women’s movement in Europe, in particular addressing Mary Wollstonecraft’s influential role.
LeGates, Marlene. In Their Time. New York and London: Routledge, 2001. An overview of European feminism, focusing mainly on the ideas and goals, rather than historical events.
Levy, Darline Gay. “Regulations of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.” Women in Revolutionary Paris. http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/481/ (November 17, 2009). A short description of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.
Lindemann, Kate.“Olympe de Gouges.” Women-philosophers.com. http://www.women- philosophers.com/Olympe-de-Gouges.html (November 19, 2009). Summary of Olympe de Gouges and her impact on early feminism in France.
Macknight, Elizabeth C. "Why Weren't They Feminists: Parisian Noble Women and the Campaigns for Women's Rights in France, 1880-1914." European Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 2 (2007): 127-141. Presents accounts of noble women in france during the late 1800s. Shows the side of feminism from non-traditional sphere, how elite women felt about gender roles and family structures.
“Mary Wollstonecraft on Education.” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/wollstonecraft.htm, (November 16, 2009). A description of Wollstonecraft’s sociological views on the education of women.
Caroline, Norton. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill (1855): a machine-readable transcription. Indian University, Bloomington, IN: Library Electronic Text Resource Service , 1996. (1855) Print. Primary Source document used to illustrate the feelings 19th Century gender roles, includes noble woman. Frustration of inequality against women expressed to the King.
Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, ed.,Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Examines feminism movements in the 1800s throughout Europe.
Rosenblatt, Helena. "On the 'Misogyny' of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to d'Alembert in Historical Context,” 2002. French Historical Studies 25, no. 1: 91. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, (November 19, 2009). An in depth analysis of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his theory of the inferiority of women.
Smith, Bonnie G., Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1989). Traces different aspects of women's lives, women's movements, and prominent women from 1700 onward.
Smith, Bonnie G., ed. “Mill, Harriet Taylor.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, vol. 3. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 239-240. An article on an instrumental English feminist, Harriet Taylor Mill.
Stearns, Peter N. Gender in World History. (New York: Routledge, 2000). An analysis of how and why gender roles are created in different parts of the world throughout history.
“Teaching Women’s Rights from Past to Present.” Women in World History Curriculum, 1996. http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/womenRightsHome.html (November 17, 2009). Presents quotes from a debate between Mary
Walker, Pamela J. Rev. of Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890 1970, by Ann T. Allen. European History Quarterly 39 (2009): 118-19. Print. Reviews Dr. Allen's work on feminism, provides a subjective view to her claims on motherhood.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929). The Western Experience, CD-ROM. An excerpt about the equal education of women from Wollstonecraft’s document, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.”
“Women during the European Enlightenment." http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/WOMEN.HTM. Illustrates how the Enlightenment positively and negatively impacted women.
Women, Power, and Politics Online Exhibition. “1878 Women’s Rights Conference: The Long History of Women’s Struggle for Equality.” the International Museum of Women. http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1874 (accessed November 19, 2009). An overview of the 1878 International Conference on Women’s Rights in Paris, France.
“WOMEN’S RIGHTS”: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, EBSCOhost (November 17, 2009). A short summary of women’s rights movements over time, specifically the role of industrialization and the teachings of the church.